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Winners of the Pellas-Ryder Award for 2017

The Paul Pellas - Graham Ryder Award for the best student paper in planetary sciences is administered jointly by the Meteoritical Society and the Planetary Geology Division of the Geological Society of America. It is given to the graduate or undergraduate student who, in the opinion of the Selection Committee, the Meteoritical Society Council, and the Management Board of the Planetary Geology Division of the Geological Society of America, submitted as first author the best planetary science paper published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal during the previous year.

For 2017 the Award has been given to two students with equally outstanding papers, Gerit Budde and James Keane.

Gerit Budde (left), James Keane (right)

Gerrit Budde, a PhD student at the Wilhelms-Universität Münster Germany, is jointly awarded the 2017 Pellas-Ryder award for his paper 'Tungsten isotopic constraints on the age and origin of chondrules', published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2016. The paper presents fundamental new insights into the origin of chondrules, through the discovery of complementary nucleosynthetic tungsten (W) isotope anomalies in chondrule and co-existing matrix.

James Keane, PhD student at the University of Arizona, is jointly awarded the 2017 Pellas-Ryder award for his paper 'Reorientation and faulting of Pluto due to volatile loading within Sputnik Planitia' published in Nature in 2016. The research tests the hypothesis that the Sputnik Planitia impact basin region of Pluto has been infilled over millions of years by volatile ices, driving the reorientation of Pluto. Outcomes of the study indicate that there was feedback between the planet’s volatile cycle and rotational stability. The paper is an outstanding study utilizing newly available data from the NASA New Horizons mission to Pluto.